Tale of Multiple Housing Markets

A few days ago the Wallstreet Journal published an article titled "A Tale of Two Housing Markets: Prices Fall in the West While the East Booms". This serves as a timely reminder that national news is not local news especially when it comes to the housing market.

Our DC Metro market is divided into numerous neighborhoods known as hyper-local markets, each of which behaves differently. These neigborhood markets are then divided into differently behaving markets by price-point and home type. The chart above for DC, in which we see demand in the slow range for everything but "luxury condos" (condos priced above $570,000), illustrates this point perfectly.

What I'm getting at is that there's no way to simplify this. It really is local market specific and then some, which is why a well-versed agent is indispensible when you're trying to dig into and prepare for the realties of the market where you live or want to live.